Table of Contents

Transceiver Control

FLRIG is a transceiver control program designed to be used either stand alone or as an adjunct to FLDIGI. The supported transceivers all have some degree of CAT. The FLRIG user interface changes to accommodate the degree of CAT support available for the transceiver in use.

Three different main dialog aspect ratios can be selected to suit the computer screen dimensions and operator preferences. The wide aspect ratio can be resized horizontally. The narrow aspect ratios are fixed in width and height.

A fourth interface is available for all transceivers. It is suitable for use on a touch screen

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The back end control code for each transceiver is unique to FLRIG. No additional libraries or definition files are required.

Setup

Restore Freq/Mode and FLRIG will read the current frequency / mode from the transceiver at start. It will then restore those at exit.

Keep Freq/Mode and FLRIG use the transceiver frequency and mode for it's initial startup values.

Tooltips and a small popup information box will appear above most controls when the mouse is allowed to hover over the control.

Small sliders to compress the user interface as above in the right hand panel.

Xcvr Select

I/O Ports - Primary

Select the rig in use from the "Rig" combo box.

The default values associated with that transceiver will be preset for you. These have been verified by the test team but might require some tweaking for your particular h/w.

You may prefer to use h/w PTT signaling instead of CAT PTT. Not all transceivers support the CAT PTT function, but it will be preset to on if the selected transceiver supports that command. The h/w PTT may be shared with the CAT serial port.

If your serial connection is a CI-V device you might need to check "Echo" and also set either RTS or DTR to +12 if CI-V power is derived from the serial port.

I/O Ports - PTT

Your PTT h/w control may also make use of a second serial port.

I/O Ports - Aux

Aux Controls

You might also need access to special h/w functions. FLRIG provides this via the DTR and RTS signal lines of an independent serial port. Additional main dialog controls are enabled and shown if you select anything other than NONE (the default) on this tab.

I/O Ports - Polling

Providing you transceiver supports the various meters and controls, you can elect to poll these every time the poll cycle occurs. Polling a value causes FLRIG to follow and well as control a particular transceiver function or control. The polling cycle will slow down as you elect to poll more and more values.

I/O Ports - Polling

Testing your transceiver commands. FLRIG might not support a particular CAT command for your transceiver. You can test the support for a particular command using the "Send Cmd" tab. The command string must comply with the transceiver requirements. If ASCII text is used, as with transceivers based on the Kenwood command set you enter the string without spaces, i.e.

FA;

to read the A vfo .

For binary strings, used in older Yaesu transceivers, and all Icom CI-V type transceivers you need to enter the string as space delineated hex values, i.e.

Press the SEND button to transfer the command to the transceiver. The response will appear in the lower text control.

Select the toggle button "Small sliders" on the Config menu for 1/2 size sliders and a dialog layout that uses less vertical space.

FT950 Minimal

Additional control settings may be available depending on the transceiver being controlled. These are in a drop-down area toggled by the arrow button to the left of the attenuator button on the small aspect ratio dialog view. These are the controls for the Yeasu FT950.

FLRIG - FT950

FT950 CW

FT950 Vox

FT950 SPCH

FT950 MISC

For the FT-450D, these control when accessed from the "touch" user interface scheme appear as:

FT-450D main panel

FT-450D button panel

FT-450D sliders panel

FT-450D 'Bands' panel

FT-450D CW panel

FT-450D QSK panel

FT-450D VOX panel

FT-450D MISC panel

User Interface

Right click on the main dialog power meter scale to open up this selection dialog. Each of the 4 scales and the "Auto scaled" box are buttons. Press the one you want to use. Auto-scaling adjusts the meter scale to the smallest scale consistent with the current measured peak power. If that power is fluctuating near the transistion point between two scales you might want to fix the scale to either the larger or smaller.

Operating Controls

Frequency Control

The frequency display is also a control. Each numeric is sensitive to the mouse left/right buttons for up/down and to the mouse scroll wheel for rapidly changing value. Click on upper half of the digit to increase frequency, and the lower half of the digit to decrease the frequency. Put the mouse over any of the numeric segments and you can enter a new frequency using the keyboard numeric keypad. If you make an error simply enter a non-numeric key. Set the newly entered frequency by pressing the Enter key.

To paste a frequency from the clipboard (kHz only), press control-V followed by the Enter key

Vfo-A and Vfo-B are separate control, A on the left, B on the right.

Left click on the A->B button to swap vfos. Right click on the A->B button to transfer vfoA to vfoB.

When the mouse pointer is over the frequency display you can also change frequency values using the arrow and page key buttons:

left / right arrow - increase / decrease 1 Hz

up / down arrow - increase / decrease 10 Hz

Page Up / Page Down - increase / decrease 100 Hz

Control Sliders

The buttons that have a light box are toggles - activated when the lighted box is colored. Some of these are linked to a slider. If the button state is inactive then that associated slider will be greyed out. In the example the volume control is active and the NR control is inactive.

FLRIG/FLDIGI

Operating FLRIG with FLDIGI requires a simple setup in FLDIGI. Deselect all but the "xmlrpc" rig control. Xmlrpc is used via a local socket device for the two programs to communicate. FLDIGI acts as the server and FLRIG the client. There is no requirement for start / stop ordering of the programs.

FLRIG sends rig configuration data to FLDIGI when the two programs initially recognize each other. This data is used to populate the rig name, the available modes and the available bandwidths.

After this initial communications the operator can set the paired controls from either FLDIGI or FLRIG. The two programs will remain synchronized. The data from the computer to the transceiver is always from FLRIG.

PTT can be activated at FLRIG or using the T/R button on FLDIGI. FLDIGI also engages the PTT via the macro <TX> <RX> tags. When operating digital modes with FLDIGI you should use the PTT from FLDIGI.

Meter Filtering

Meter Filter Controls

You can control the behavior of both the average and peak values of the S-meter and Power out meters. Setting the controls to 1 for both average and peak will simply display the latest value available from the transceiver. The average setting results in the display showing the average of the last N readings. The peak value will display the average peak value over the last M readings.

Event Log

The event log is opened from the "Debug" menu. It allows you to view the serial and xmlrpc data exchanges between FLRIG, FLDIGI, and the transceiver.